In the jockeys’ weighing room at Folkestone, a life-size cardboard cut out of
AP McCoy, arms folded, stands proudly in the corner. As if it were a school
classroom, some joker has been unable to resist scribbling a silly, scraggly
beard on to that lantern jaw.

Leading fancy: AP McCoy is favourite to become the first jockey to be crowned BBC Sports Personality on the YearPhoto: PA

Cue hoots of laughter. As you can gather, McCoy’s peers have been unable to resist a bit of fun at the great man’s expense in the face of all the frantic electioneering by the racing industry to ensure the Irishman is on Sunday crowned the first jockey to win the award in 57 editions.

McCoy, smiling ruefully, wouldn’t have it any other way. Nobody is allowed to get too billy big boots in his world.

Yet do not be fooled by the gentle mickey-taking; a day at the races shadowing AP is to discover that the ones most urgently wanting him to be honoured on Sunday are the men who compete alongside him in sport’s most brutally unforgiving daily grind. For McCoy is not just one of them; he’s their shining symbol.

“We do think it’s important that he wins because we’re the ones who know how far he pushes it. He’s broken everything. Every record and every bone,” McCoy’s fellow jockey, Dominic Elsworth, tells me when his mate is out of earshot.

“He’s actually a freak. In a good way. Like a Michael Jordan or a Usain Bolt. Everyone in the weighing room thinks it. Sometimes you watch one of his winners and it gives you a wry smile, it’s such a pleasure to watch. And you think ‘Jesus Christ, how did he carry that one home?’ And the unreal thing is that he’s been so great for so long, for 15 years day in day out.”

And this is one of those days. Long, unglamorous, wearying and, for a change, fruitless. It’s Tuesday, 7.45am, McCoy has foregone his usual early-morning hot bath at his Lambourn home and gulped down his breakfast — that is, a cup of sugary tea — to get on the road for the 150-mile trek to Folkestone.

Often, he would ride out at nearby stables before going racing but there is no time today. His regular chauffeur, the fantastically silent Arnie, drives McCoy’s Audi as the champ offers a lift to Elsworth while chiding him for being too tight-fisted to fork out for his own Racing Post.

The motorway boredom. This is the bit McCoy hates. Seventy-five thousand miles a year. Stuck in jams, feet up against the dashboard, he gets some kip — “He could sleep on a barbed wire fence him,” says Elsworth — before chatting on his mobile with his race agent Dave Roberts about his next day’s rides.

He still has no idea where he’ll be going. Could be 10 minutes away from home at Newbury. Or even Ireland. What, by private jet? “Yeah, private for me and 200 others. It’s called Aer Lingus.”

He will go anywhere to add to his unfathomable 3,383 winners from 13,664 rides. “I’m told that’s the equivalent of riding round the world one and a half times!” he smiles. Would he, say, make an 800-mile round trip to Ayr for just one good ride? “Well if I didn’t take it someone else would,” he says. Ah, still famished after all these years!

To McCoy, it still matters not if it’s the Aintree Grand National or the 2.35 on a brass monkey’s December afternoon at Folkestone. “That’s it. That’s what it’s all about. Winning the 2.35 at Folkestone. At least it is today. It’s the winning feeling you can’t do without.”

And what if he wasn’t racing’s ultimate winner any more? What if, say, Richard Johnson, his perennial pursuer who keeps him so keen, actually ended his run as champion jockey next season. “That would probably be enough for me, so it would,” he says. “Because if I’ve been good enough to be champion for 16 years, then I’m obviously not as good as I was.”

But he is still as good as he was. Elsworth reckons better. Could McCoy see himself being champion for 20 years on the bounce? Or going on to 4,000 winners? “I’d have to keep going ’til I’m 40 to do that. But you never say never.” Never say never. The McCoy mantra.

Suddenly, an interview pops up on the car radio. It’s Lee Westwood telling Chris Evans why AP would be the worthiest winner of the BBC award. Evans agrees, suggesting all the nominees would vote for AP McCoy just sits in the front listening and thinking: “A bit surreal this ” He is flattered but a mite embarrassed by the campaign to back him.

“Anyway, I’d never hold out hope. I mean, Frankie Dettori couldn’t win it. And, unlike myself, he actually does have a personality.” Typical McCoy self-deprecation. He is actually a very engaging personality with a dry humour. He reckons he has mellowed from the youngster so obsessed by record breaking “that nothing else in the world seemed to matter and I didn’t have as much time for other people as I should”.

He recalls his craziest day. Riding at Kempton, he fell in the first race. Yet even knowing he had broken his collarbone and with not even strong painkillers able to dull the agony, he went on to ride three winners that same afternoon.

“Why did I do it? Because I felt I could,” he shrugs.

“I was practically in tears, mind. Whether, mentally, I could do it now, I don’t know.” His mates know. They watched him fall heavily three times — that’s three of about 700 tumbles in his career — on one afternoon at Ascot last month and thought he would be a goner for the week. One day off and he was back.

Danger is such a constant that the first thing his mellowing agent, three-year-old daughter Eve, asked him the other night was: “Did you have any falls today, daddy?” He just told her not to worry because he didn’t go fast enough to fall off.

When we get to Folkestone, it dawns that McCoy still hasn’t eaten a thing all day. Never have I have never felt so guilty eating a bag of Minstrels.

He sips another tea, has a bit of chicken and it’s straight to the weighing room sauna, the natural habitat of a 5ft 10in bloke who needs to be two stone lighter than his natural weight.

Then physio treatment — “It’s the metal plates in my back; makes my back stiff” before straight out into the bitter cold for his first race. Weird.

“AP McCoy needs you — every vote counts!” pronounces the racecard, offering a picture of Tony in finger-pointing Kitchener mode. But actually AP needs a winner. Not today. The 2.35 comes and goes. Four rides, barely a sniff. A wasted afternoon?

“Not at all. There’s quite a few of the lads out injured who’d love to have been riding here at all. I’m very lucky compared to many of my colleagues. I don’t think for one moment I have a tough life.” No wonder they secretly adore him.

On the road back to Lambourn, after a bit more chicken and a couple of Jaffa Cakes — his last meal of the day, he fancies – thoughts turn to how even Lester Piggott, McCoy’s hero, never won the BBC award.

“There will never be a jockey who will ever have that ability. Ever. He was the ultimate and I’d be embarrassed to mention myself in the same breath,” he ponders.

Elsworth tells McCoy he is doing himself down. And he is right. McCoy is one of the great sportsmen of any era. And even if he doesn’t win on Sunday night, what the hell. There will always be the 1.30 at Taunton on Monday.

Ferguson backs McCoy for award

Sir Alex Ferguson believes "something would be wrong" should 15-time champion jockey Tony McCoy not win the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award.

The Scot believes the winner of April's Grand National deserves the award not just for his achievements this year but for his long, illustrious career.

"I will be backing Tony," said the Manchester United manager. "He deserves it. Many jockeys have lasted as long as him, but his courage, his achievements, his riding skills stand out. If he doesn’t win it, there’s something wrong."